his fingers through an opera glass; but he runs no small risk of becoming a knave. The chances are against him. Though he should begin by calculating the consequences with regard to others, yet by the mere habit of never contemplating an action in its own proportions and immediate relations to his moral being, it is fcarcely poffible but that he muft end in selfishness: for the 'you,' and the 'they' will stand on different occafions for a thoufand different perfons, while the 'I' is one only, and recurs in every calculation. Or grant that the principle of expediency should prompt to the fame outward deeds as are commanded by the law of reafon; yet the doer himself is debafed. But if it be replied, that the re-action on the agent's own mind is to form a part of the calculation, then it is a rule that destroys itself in the very propounding, as will be more fully demonstrated in the second or ethical divifion of The Friend, when I shall have detected and expofed the equivoque between an action and a series of motions, by which the determinations of the will are to be realized in the world of the fenfes. What modification of the latter correfponds to the former, and is entitled to be called by the fame name, will often depend on time, place, persons and circumstances, the confideration of which requires an exertion of the judgment; but the action itself remains the fame, and like all other ideas pre-exifts in the reafon, or, in the more expreffive and perhaps more precise and philosophical language of St. Paul, in the spirit, unalterable because unconditional, or with no other than that moft awful condition, as fure as God liveth, it is fo! These remarks are inferted in this place, because the principle admits of easiest illustration in the instance of veracity and the actions connected with the fame, and may then be intelligibly applied to other departments of morality, all of which Woollfton indeed confiders as only fo many different forms of truth and falfehood. So far I treated of oral communication of the truth. The applicability of the fame principle is then tried and affirmed in publications by the prefs, first as between the individual and his own conscience, and then between the publisher and the state: and under this head I have confidered at large the queftions of a free press and the law of libel, the anomalies and peculiar difficulties of the latter, and the only poffible folution compatible with the continuance of the former: a folution rifing out of and justified by the necessarily anomalous and unique nature of the law itself. I confefs that I look back on this difcuffion concerning the prefs and its limits with a fatisfaction unufual to me in the review of my own labours: and if the date of their first publication (September, 1809) be remembered, it will not perhaps be denied on an impartial comparison, that I have treated this moft important subject, so especially interesting in the present time, more fully and more systematically than it had up to that time been. Interim tum recti confcientia, tum illo me confolor, quod optimis quibufque certe non improbamur, fortaffis omnibus placituri, fimul atque livor ab obitu conquieverit. Lastly, the subject is concluded even as it commenced, and as befeemed a difquifition placed as the steps and veftibule of the whole work, with an enforcement of the abfolute neceffity of principles grounded in reason as the bafis or rather as the living root of all genuine expedience. Where these are despised or at best regarded as aliens from the actual business of life, and configned to the ideal world of speculative philosophy and Utopian politics, instead of state wisdom we shall have state-craft, and for the talent of the governor the cleverness of an embarrassed spendthrift-which confifts in tricks to fhift off difficulties and dangers when they are close upon us, and to keep them at arm's length, not in folid and grounded courses to preclude or fubdue them. We must content ourselves with expedient-makers — with fire-engines against fires, life-boats against inundations; but no houfes built fire-proof, no dams that rise above the water-mark. The reader will have obferved that already has the term, reason, been frequently contradiftinguished from the understanding and the judgment. If I could fucceed in fully explaining the sense in which the word reason is employed by me, and in satisfying the reader's mind concerning the grounds and importance of the distinction, I should feel little or no apprehenfion concerning the intelligibility of these effays from first to laft. The following fection is in part founded on this diftinction: the which remaining obscure, all else will be so as a system, however clear the component paragraphs may be, taken separately. In the appendix* to my first Lay Sermon, I have, indeed, treated the question at confiderable length, but chiefly in relation to the heights of theology and metaphyfics. In the next number I attempt to explain myself more popularly, and trust that with no great expenditure of attention the reader will fatisfy his mind, that our remote ancestors spoke as men acquainted with the conftituent parts of their own moral and intellectual being, when they described one man as being out of his fenfes,' another as 'out of his wits,' orderanged in his understanding,' and a third as having 'loft his reason.' Observe, the understanding may be deranged, weakened, or perverted; but the reafon is either loft or not loft, that is, wholly present or wholly absent. * The third essay, erroneously lettered B.—Ed. ESSAY V. Man may rather be defined a religious than a rational creature, in regard that in other creatures there may be fomething of reason, but there is nothing of religion. HARRINGTON. F the reader will fubftitute the word "understanding" for "reafon," and the word "reafon" for "religion," Harrington has here completely ex preffed the truth for which I am contending. Man may rather be defined a rational than an intelligent creature, in regard that in other creatures there may be something of understanding, but there is nothing of reason. But that this was Harrington's meaning is evident. Otherwise, instead of comparing two faculties with each other, he would contraft a faculty with one of its own objects, which would involve the fame abfurdity as if he had faid, that man might rather be defined an astronomical than a seeing animal, because other animals poffeffed the fenfe of fight, but were incapable of beholding the fatellites of Saturn, or the nebula of fixed ftars. If further confirmation be necessary, it may be supplied by the following reflections, the leading thought of which I remem |